Just a Phase
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: When Harry and Draco's relationship gets found out, the storm of gossip is almost worse than the people who aren't actually supportive. And as their "love" starts fading under the pressure, Harry has to wonder if the people who are telling him that this is just a phase aren't right. COMPLETE.


**Title:** Just a Phase

 **Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

 **Pairing:** Established Harry/Draco, canon pairings mentioned

 **Rating:** R

 **Warnings:** Angst, accidental voyeurism, Hogwarts "eighth year"

 **Wordcount:** 8400

 **Summary:** When Harry and Draco's relationship gets found out, the storm of gossip is almost worse than the people who aren't actually supportive. And as their "love" starts fading under the pressure, Harry has to wonder if the people who are telling him that this is just a phase aren't right.

 **Author's Notes:** This is the first of my July Celebration fics, originally a (much belated) Advent fic for aliasfanatic04: _Oh lovely. I would like an 8th year fic with Harry/Draco in an established relationship that they have decided to keep hidden. Eventually everyone finds out and some people are supportive but others are not. This causes some stress in their relationship which they barely manage to stay together. I have no squicks based on what I've seen you write. My kinks are rimming, prefer Draco on bottom, and angry!sex._

 **Just a Phase**

It was pure carelessness, that they hadn't managed to reach the usual deserted alcove in the dungeons—near Snape's old quarters—where they usually did things to each other. Pure lust. Harry had only been able to think, when Draco shoved him against the wall and knelt in front of him, how _hot_ this was, how it was wonderful to see Draco's mouth closing around him in the light of torches instead of in _Lumos_ —

Pure carelessness, and bad luck, that a prefect for Slytherin had come on them during his rounds.

Harry heard the gasp and the pounding feet, but by the time he looked up, the prefect was gone. Harry swore and reached down to tangle his fingers through Draco's hair, yanking at him urgently.

" _What_?" Draco snapped, staring up at Harry with angry eyes, his fingers closing hard on Harry's hips.

"I—I think someone caught us."

Draco's eyes widened, and Harry saw some light behind them go out. But the next second, he bent his head back down and began to suck again. Harry snapped his hips forwards, forgetting what Draco always told him about keeping them still.

"Stop _choking_ me," Draco snapped, but immediately plunged his mouth back down again instead of pulling away. He sucked with angry tears on his cheeks, and Harry came a second later. Draco had one hand down his pants before Harry could even offer to return the favor, wanking hard enough that Harry winced.

He didn't get to see a wet patch on Draco's robes, either. Draco stood up, yanked at his clothes, yanked at Harry's trousers but didn't pull them up, and said flatly, "You'd better hope that no one saw us."

"Because you'd deny the whole thing?" Harry's rage was nearer the surface than ever since he'd begun "dating" Draco. It was more like a relationship of mutual sex and snapping.

"Because it means the end of our ordinary lives in ways you can't understand," Draco said, voice still missing something Harry was used to hearing there, and strode away into the shadows of the dungeons.

Harry stood still, shaking his head and wondering what Draco meant. Then he did his trousers up himself and made his way to Gryffindor Tower.

* * *

As it turned out—Harry discovered later—the running Slytherin prefect had met up with another prefect, and immediately babbled his news. And that prefect had friends in Gryffindor.

Harry walked through the Fat Lady's portrait to deafening silence and accusing eyes. The stares lasted longer than the silence.

"How _could_ you?" Ginny whispered, shaking her head. "You can date whoever you want, Harry, but—you're dating the son of the man who tried to _kill_ me?" She laughed, her voice watery. "Is that why you told me so abruptly that you were dropping me? Because you were repulsed by me still being alive and wanted to get away from me?"

"What?" Harry stared at her. "No!"

"Then you must have one hell of a good excuse otherwise," Ginny snapped, and turned away.

"I think it's obvious why Harry thought he had to stop dating you, Ginny," said Hermione, although she kept giving Harry curious looks. She came over and stood in front of Harry as if she thought looking at his face would tell her more. "Harry is gay. He couldn't date a girl."

"That's not it, either!" Harry threw up his hands. "I like both blokes and girls. It's just that—" He cut himself off as he realized that saying "I didn't enjoy sleeping with Ginny" wasn't going to get him a sympathetic reaction, either. It might be the kind of thing he could tell Hermione later.

Or not, he decided, from the expression on Hermione's face as she looked at him. "What, then?" she pressed gently.

"I don't need to defend my dating choices," Harry said. He felt exhausted, as though someone had spent the night rubbing gritty sleep into his eyes. "You wouldn't care if I'd been caught with a Gryffindor girl."

"But it's not a Gryffindor, and it's not a _girl_."

That was Parvati, of all people. Harry stared at her. Had she hoped for a chance with him? He had no idea, and he was still tired of feeling like he was accountable to other people for the one he chose to snog.

"I'm going to bed," he snapped, and turned and walked up the stairs to his bedroom.

Of course, he wasn't safe there, either. Ron lay on his bed with his back turned to Harry, and his resentful silence radiating off him like heat. Seamus and Dean at least had the grace to stop whispering together when Harry walked past them, but they gave him curious stares that made Harry hunch his shoulders.

"You can ask me something if you have a question," Harry said, and flopped on his bed.

Dean and Seamus looked at each other again, and then Seamus cleared his throat and asked, "Is it—true that you fancy both blokes and birds?"

Harry closed his eyes. He really should have _expected_ this question, shouldn't he. "I've never fancied either of you."

"How can we be sure?" Seamus nodded at Dean as if for support. "We both know that you could fancy us and you'd never say."

Harry turned around with his teeth clenched. "I _would_ have said, because unlike some people, I don't believe in holding back simply because I might offend other people with who I date."

"I wouldn't worry about _offending_ people," Dean said, and folded his arms. "I'd just care about dating someone who didn't try to stab me in the back during the war."

Harry closed his eyes. Yes, he should have expected this. He and Draco should have been more careful. He shouldn't have let himself get involved with Draco in the first place. He knew all those arguments, and it didn't sweeten his mood for him to recite them to himself now.

"I'm going to bed," he said, and turned his back to walk into the bathroom. He ignored the whispering that started up again.

Harry found himself staring into the mirror as he brushed his teeth and gave his hair a last feeble combing. Draco always said he should do that before he went to sleep each night, if he wanted to have any hope of taming it. Harry wondered what the face in the mirror really looked like to other people. Someone they could give shit to because he hadn't endured _enough_ shit in his life? Someone who should have been a hero and disappointed them all because he wasn't living that fairy-tale life?

 _I don't give a damn what they think._

But even though that was true as far as it went, they could still make his life damn uncomfortable.

Harry went back into the bedroom. Seamus and Dean were still whispering in the corner of the room, and didn't look up at him as he walked past them. But Neville was there now, sitting on the edge of the bed as if he wanted to talk to Harry.

 _Great._ Harry could just imagine most of the things Neville wanted to say, and none of them were likely to be pleasant. He turned to him because at least starting the conversation soon meant he could go to sleep earlier, and asked, "What do you want?"

Neville leaned forwards a little. "I didn't understand why you broke up with Ginny. Now I do."

Harry shrugged. At least Neville didn't seem hostile the way the rest of them were, but he was still insisting on being responded to and acting as though this mostly affected him. "Not just for that reason. If you think I need to answer for breaking up with Ginny, name the time and place for a duel."

"What? No, not like _that_."

Neville sounded so appalled that Harry had to smile despite himself. "Then tell me what you mean, and let me go to sleep," he said. Bed hadn't looked so tempting without Draco in it in weeks.

"I mean—" Neville was quiet for a second. "I don't think I need to fight you for her honor or something like that. If she wants to do that, then she's capable of doing it for herself."

"Right," Harry agreed cautiously. He no longer knew where this conversation was going.

"I was waiting to see if you would ask her out again, because _I'd_ like to take her to Hogsmeade." Neville hesitated. "But you think you'll never really be with Ginny again?"

Harry shook his head at once. "Even if this thing with Malfoy doesn't last, and it might not once everyone starts trying to spit on us, my thing with Ginny is over. Ask her and see if she says yes. I hope she does. You both deserve to be happy."

Neville smiled at him with some of his old timidity. "Thank you, Harry. I hope things work out. You deserve to be happy, too. If Malfoy makes you happy—well, who cares? It's not like he's running around doing Death Eater things _now_."

Harry half-smiled. "Thanks, Neville." He rolled over then, and Neville took the hint and let him close his curtains. Harry sat up a second later and cast a Silencing Charm so he couldn't hear Dean and Seamus hissing at each other and the increasingly fake snores from Ron's bed.

He closed his eyes. That didn't help.

 _It's not like he's running around doing Death Eater things now._

Right, but everyone would think they _knew_ why Harry had spoken up at the Malfoys' trial, now. Not because he was doing what he thought was right or even repaying Narcissa for lying to Voldemort for him, but because he had wanted to fuck Draco.

 _Does that matter?_

 _It might. Other people's perceptions sure are going to._

* * *

The stares when he walked into the Great Hall the next morning were even worse, simply because there were _more_ of them.

Harry found himself walking with his hand on his wand, something he hadn't had to do since the last time he went in to testify at a Death Eater trial. He took it off and stood, returning the gaze from one particular corner of the Ravenclaw table. He didn't know who the girl was, only that she had a nasty sneer on her face.

"Heard you like getting your cock sucked, Potter," she called out.

Harry started to answer, but Headmistress McGonagall spoke from the High Table first, her voice chilly. "Fifteen points from Ravenclaw for language, Miss Hudson. Detention to be served with me, at seven tonight."

Hudson slumped back into her chair and glared a little. Harry half-relaxed, but he didn't think McGonagall would be on his side in _all_ of this. Just the part where people used crude language in public.

"And Mr. Potter?"

Harry looked up. McGonagall was looking at him now with no light in her eyes.

"You're to see me immediately after breakfast."

He normally had a free period then. Harry sighed and nodded, then made his way to the Gryffindor table, where he ate in a little island of empty chairs and silence.

His eyes strayed more than once to the Slytherin table, but Draco wasn't there and there was no sign that he would be.

People muttered and whispered. Harry ignored them as best as he could, but there was still a dull ache in the back of his head that was going to develop into a pounding pain if he let it. He was used to this, and he could cope with it the way he had with being declared the Heir of Slytherin in second year and a mad liar in fifth year, but—

He had so hoped things would be different after the war. They had been for a few months, especially since Draco was there for him. But now it seemed it had gone back to the status quo he'd wanted to escape from.

When Harry finally stood to make his way to McGonagall's office, somebody hurled something at him from the Slytherin table. Harry only had time to see that it was full of liquid before his reflexes made him fling up a shield.

The object banged off it and rolled on the floor. It was a goblet full of something that looked like spit mixed with pumpkin juice.

Harry looked at the Slytherin table, and whatever was in his face shut them up before he could say anything. He walked out and up to McGonagall's office even as he heard Slughorn sharply assigning detention to whoever it had been.

 _No, nothing's changed at all._

* * *

"You understand that you deserve detention for your—exploits with Mr. Malfoy, Mr. Potter."

Harry stared down at his clasped hands. He thought they were clasped harder than they'd ever been when he sat in this chair in front of Dumbledore. And he felt breathless and sick in a way he hadn't even when Voldemort was after him.

 _So. Nothing's changed, again._

"Yes, Headmistress," Harry finally said, when he realized she was waiting for an answer instead of waiting for him to nod. He looked up. "The same any other student would for snogging in the corridors."

"Yes. And no."

Harry felt as though someone had stabbed him in the spine with a pitchfork. "What do you mean?" he asked slowly. "It's the same as anyone else. I don't even believe we're the first two boys caught together!"

McGonagall's mouth worked soundlessly for a minute. Then she turned and stared out the window beyond Fawkes's empty perch. Harry thought she'd probably kept the perch for a memorial, but right now, he glared furiously at it and thought it looked stupid.

"You're not," said McGonagall. "However, two—boys or two—girls are not usually treated with as much indulgence as a boy and girl together." A breath that made it seem as if she was fighting to continue breathing. "And when one of you is the Boy-Who-Lived and one of you a recently spared Death Eater…"

"Draco was tried for his crimes and declared innocent of them," said Harry. His own voice was steady. He could be glad of that, if of nothing else. "If anyone thinks public opinion should try him after that, then they're wrong."

"No." McGonagall turned back to him. "But I think you can see the problem."

"No. I _can't_."

McGonagall closed her eyes. "Mr. Potter, exploits with others of the same sex before your age of majority are seen as an experiment. A phase that children pass through because they're curious and want to see what genitals similar to their own are like."

Harry sat there and said nothing. There was nothing he could say that wouldn't emerge as a shout of rage, anyway.

"But you and Mr. Malfoy are both of age, and this is taken more seriously." McGonagall looked straight at him. "How sure are you that this isn't a phase, that this is something you might want to pursue more seriously with Mr. Malfoy when this year is over?"

 _What can I do? A dishonest answer is a betrayal, and an honest one means that I get punished more harshly. For some reason._

If he didn't tell her what he'd said in Gryffindor Tower, someone who was there would. Or maybe she'd already heard it from some "concerned" person. Harry raised his eyebrows and let his disdain show a little. "I like both men and women, Headmistress."

"But is the thing that you and Mr. Malfoy have…?"

This time, Harry had to tell the truth because he couldn't come up with a plausible lie. "I have no idea how long it'll last or how seriously he takes it."

McGonagall shut her eyes. "You'll have detention with me. Mr. Malfoy, too. And I would like you to think seriously about whether this is something you'll want to pursue for the rest of your life or not."

Harry wanted to scream. But he nodded and said, "Yes, Headmistress. When will the detention be?"

"Tuesday at eight." McGonagall opened her eyes and gave him a bleak look. "And I hope that you understand what I mean when I say that you must not—fool around with Mr. Malfoy again until you are out of school."

"Of course."

Harry stood up to go, but McGonagall caught his eye and said in an earnest voice that sounded as stupid as the memorial perch to Harry, "I hope you'll understand in time, Harry. And agree."

Harry could feel the scream building. He nodded and hurried out of the room, knowing McGonagall would take rudeness better than hatred right now.

He still had to punch a wall on the way down the moving staircase, just to get some of the feelings boiling inside him out.

* * *

"It took me a little while, Harry, but I understand."

Harry tensed his shoulders and tried to look as calm and uninterested as he could while Hermione slid into the seat beside him at the library. "Oh?" he asked, and turned a page of the Potions book he couldn't pretend to be deep into now.

"Of course." Hermione gave him a kind smile. It was better than half the expressions he'd got from Gryffindors in the last week. That only made him suspicious. Harry turned to face her, and Hermione's smile wavered a little. "I mean it, Harry. I really understand. You don't have to look at me like that."

"Okay." Harry found a smile from somewhere and pasted it on. It was enough to fool Hermione, at least, who nodded earnestly.

"You probably fell into infatuation with Malfoy because of how obsessed you were with him during our sixth year, right? Even after the war, when you _knew_ he wasn't up to something, you have to follow him around and make sure of that. And then it turned into sex."

"No."

Hermione broke off with a blink, as if she couldn't imagine a world where Harry disagreed with her version of events. "What do you mean? What happened instead?"

"We fell together."

Hermione waited for more than that, but Harry couldn't give her any. _He_ knew it hadn't started until after he'd come back to Hogwarts. When he'd testified for Draco, all he'd done was glance at him sometimes to make sure he wasn't grinning or about to say something inappropriate. But Draco's head had stayed bowed most of the time.

It was only after they had come back to Hogwarts that Harry had seen Draco's eyes held a different look. It was the look of someone who was going to do whatever needed to be done, because what lay behind him was so horrible he couldn't go back to it.

It was a look Harry thought he was attracted to because he often saw it in the mirror.

So he'd spent more time around Draco, willingly, and spoken to him a few times, and noticed the way Draco looked at him, which he didn't think Draco had noticed about himself right then. Then they were together in a few detentions, and Harry let his hands and his words linger, his admiration come clear, and…

They'd fallen from there.

"I need a little more explanation than that, Harry."

Harry tightened his muscles again when he heard Hermione's voice. "I can't explain it better than that," he said. "We were attracted to each other. We got together. That's all there is. What do you want, Hermione? Some grand romantic story?"

"Merlin, no!" Hermione's voice was a guileless protest. Harry thought she really did mean it. "And I don't think there's anything wrong with you for being attracted to men and women at the same time, either."

"Okay," Harry said. "Thanks."

"But I don't think Malfoy is the right choice for you, either. I mean, the obsession you had with him was fleeting, wasn't it? And what you feel for him right now will probably be fleeting, too. A phase that you go through in your attraction to other people. Did I tell you that Anthony Goldstein is gay?"

Harry stood up and picked up his book. "You don't understand," he told Hermione. "Not really."

"What? _Harry_. Why?"

But Harry could only walk away from her, because he didn't really understand, either. He would have agreed in a heartbeat that what he had with Draco wasn't some grand romantic story. He would have laughed at anyone who told him he was really in love.

And yet, he got angry when these people came up to him and told him it was a phase and he shouldn't "fool around" with Draco and he would get over it easily and date someone else, someone more suitable.

 _Why_?

* * *

The first time Draco willingly spoke to him after they got caught was in one of the latter detentions they served with McGonagall, because apparently one of them wasn't enough to punish them for the extreme crime of being careless.

McGonagall had put them to work cleaning up the Transfiguration classroom. A third-year Ravenclaw had had the "brilliant" idea to turn a quill into toffee instead of the stick they were supposed to be turning it into, and now the walls were sticky and gleamed and smelled so strongly of sugar that Harry cast an Odor-Dissipating Charm the minute he stepped inside.

"It'll take more than one of those, Potter."

Harry tried not to leap in the air and yell in shock. He had assumed Draco would spend the detention in silence, not looking at him, the way they had the first one. He tried to answer in a normal voice. "I know, but it'll help."

"Not really. You're wasting your time on useless magic."

Draco didn't look at him, casting several spells on the base of the wall he was standing in front of. He'd already cleaned up most of it, Harry realized. He was probably eager to finish the work up and get to bed.

 _And away from me._

Harry moved over to the wall behind the last row of desks. The mess was worst here, probably because it was closest to where the Ravenclaw had sat. Harry grimaced and mimicked Draco's spells, then had to go back and cast them again. Too weak, and the toffee lingered; too strong, and the first layer of wood or stone on the wall got pulled off with it.

"Why do you never bloody talk to me anymore?"

Draco's tone was almost conversational, and he inspected the wall in front of him as if it was the center of the universe. Harry knew, because he risked one look at Draco only to see his face turned firmly away.

Harry hid a sigh and responded, "Because I didn't know what to say."

Draco jerked as though Harry had hit him with a Stunner to the back of the head. But he didn't turn around. He cast a Polishing Charm that would restore some of the wall's luster and moved a step down towards the door. "That was stupid of you."

"I thought you might want to break it off." Harry shook his head. "You haven't shown any tendency to seek me out. And everyone keeps talking about how it's a phase and we'll both find someone else. I thought maybe you'd decided this was as good a place as any to end things. Maybe you were even breathing a sigh of relief—"

Harry stopped, because Draco was laughing. Bracing himself with one hand in a sticky patch on the wall, even, not caring enough to look. His laugh was a cackling, wheezy thing, and sounded horrible. Harry stared at him, and said nothing.

"He decides that without even talking to me," Draco gasped, and tried to wipe his face. His hand came away from the wall with a sucking sound, and he frowned and muttered _Scourgify_ at it. "He decides that without knowing what my life in Slytherin has been _like_ since then."

He turned around. Harry saw the wild look in his eyes, as wild but far colder than the gleam that had been there when they engaged in their "activities," and winced.

"What have they been saying?"

"Oh, not much. It's what they've been _doing._ They very much disapprove of me taking up with the man who saved me from prison and ended the threat to the wizarding world's freedom." Draco's voice was shiny and blank. "From the Stinging Curses to the back, to poisoning all my Potions ingredients, to leaving a maddened hoptoad in my trunk—I don't know, what's the most _clever_ or _creative_? It's so hard to choose."

Harry winced. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"No. Because you turned out to be a coward after all."

Harry turned around and stared at him. Draco's eyes were fixed on him as much as they had ever been, but now, Harry wished there was some way he could soothe the emotions in them.

"I thought I was doing what you wanted," Harry insisted between clenched teeth. "When you didn't talk to me afterwards—you _looked away from me_ in the Great Hall the day of—"

"My life has been fucking terrible since that day," Draco said. His voice sounded like mashed rock now. "I didn't talk to you because I wanted one indication that you cared. Just one. Just one move you'd make first. And then we could come together and stand against this.

"But since you didn't bother to make that move, my Housemates have concluded I'm just as abandoned as I look. And they're taking that out on me like you wouldn't _believe_."

Harry winced again and again. He made his tongue move, and say the only words that were likely to reassure Draco now. "What can I do to stop it?"

"I just told you."

"Well, if someone tries to get us in trouble for talking in public, or assumes we're going to make out any second, won't it hurt you further?"

Draco turned away without a word. His next charm aimed at a sticky place on the wall was particularly vicious. Harry stood there helplessly, watching him, and wished he knew what to say.

But no matter what he tried to say in the next few moments, nothing happened. Draco kept his head turned to the side, expertly ignoring Harry, and Harry finally gave up and went back to working on his own side of the classroom.

 _Fine. If he doesn't want me to care about him, then I won't._

But it was hard to keep his back turned, let alone persuade himself that it was the best course. Harry finally decided he would try again, and just keep going until he irritated Draco enough for an answer, if nothing else.

By the time he turned around, Draco was gone.

* * *

"What the _fuck,_ Potter?" Theodore Nott was spluttering, shaking his head from the sudden fall of water Harry had dumped on him, and staring at Harry as if he had gone mental.

Harry put his wand away, and smiled at him a little. "The next time you start talking about Draco Malfoy's sexual skills in a public place, the same thing will happen. Evidently you need a cold shower."

Nott stared at him with his mouth slightly open. Then he said, "You don't care about Draco, so why shouldn't I speculate? He needs someone who can take care of him."

Harry took a long step towards him, making Nott back up. Few of the Slytherins cared to confront Harry even in their own territory, which technically the stairs leading down to the dungeons were. Nott glanced down at his feet and shuffled as if he thought Harry would make him fall.

"I do care," Harry whispered. "Everyone in the other Houses already thinks I do, so why should I hold back with you? I wasn't doing anything because I wanted to prove Draco could handle himself. But if you're going to harass him when he's not even here…" Harry shrugged and spun his wand pointedly between his fingers. "Then I can take some action."

The Slytherin girl Nott had been talking to, a blonde Harry didn't recognize, stood further up the stairs with a hand over her mouth. Harry ignored her. She looked too timid to attack him from behind, and that was the only thing he was really worried about now.

"I'm sure Draco will be touched to hear you care," Nott drawled, but his eyes were hard.

"Yes. Do tell him, if you would?" Harry tapped his wand in the hollow of Nott's throat. "Since I'm busy and don't have the time to tell him myself right now."

Nott's eyes darkened in rage. Harry took a step back, winked, and continued sauntering up the stairs, putting his back to both of them. He knew he could raise a shield that would deflect two curses as long as they were in the same place.

"How awful, Theo," the girl was saying when Harry bothered to listen. "Do you think we ought to go to the Headmistress?"

"No," said Nott. "I'm going to go and tell Draco, just like the idiot requested. And then he'll see what happens."

 _Yeah,_ Harry thought, his hand tightening down on his wand to ease the temptation to swing around and curse them. _And if it has anything to do with you threatening Draco, part of it's going to happen to you._

* * *

"You really have gone crazy, Harry."

Harry smiled at Hermione as nicely as he could and stood up with the rose in his hand. "I haven't. I'm just doing what I should have been all along."

"You'll get detentions, though." Ron didn't sound particularly upset, but Harry didn't know if that was because he'd come to terms with Harry and Draco's "thing" or because he didn't believe Harry would go through with this. "And McGonagall scolding you, and people staring and gossiping."

"Like they don't do that _already_ ," Harry muttered. Some people seemed to think the Boy-Who-Lived should be common property after the war. They not only stared, they spent half the day arguing in loud voices over what career he should have, how many interviews he should give, who he should date…

 _Huh. Maybe some of the reaction to Draco and me isn't that we're two blokes or that he's a former enemy. They just wanted to date me themselves._

"You'll regret it."

"Not as much as I regret staying silent for so long."

And Draco had finally come into the Great Hall, which meant Harry could walk over to him and present the rose he held. It was an artificial flower, crafted of a ruby for the petals and a thin stalk of golden wire for the stem, which Harry had ordered from a goldsmith in Diagon Alley.

Draco stared at him so steadily that Harry didn't know if he would take the flower or not, but at last he nodded and reached out slowly to curl his hand around the stem. Harry gently pressed his thumb and forefinger down, and mouthed, "It's a Portkey."

Draco's eyes widened. "Really?" he asked without breath.

"Yes. I want to know you can protect yourself if you're in danger. It'll activate then and bring you straight to my side, no matter where I am."

"I—Portkeys like that cost a _fortune_."

Harry smiled. "What better thing could I do with all the money I inherited?"

Draco only gazed at him wide-eyed. Harry showed him how the stem, made of soft gold, bent so that the flower could easily be entwined into a robe collar, or around his wrist, or even around his wand if he wanted. The whole time, Draco watched him with the same intensity.

" _Mr._ Potter!"

McGonagall again. Harry stepped back and touched Draco on the cheek, ignoring the hisses and gasps that followed. "I'll see you soon," he said.

Then he turned and walked away to see what the Headmistress wanted, satisfied that at least one pair of stunned eyes on his back had the _right_ to be there.

* * *

"I already warned you about what would happen if you continued to pursue this course, Mr. Potter."

Harry looked unflinchingly at McGonagall. Even though she seemed so much more upset than she had last time, he wasn't as afraid. He thought now that she'd convinced herself that it was just a mistake last time. Just a phase.

And now he had gone and _deliberately_ given that Portkey to Draco, so there couldn't be any mistake. He was never going to lead the normal life that everyone expected of him.

Harry wasn't stupid enough to think this was the love affair of the century. Maybe he and Draco would get bored of each other eventually. But his reputation as someone who fit into the nice and normal way things happened in the wizarding world was shot.

 _As if it shouldn't be already, between the Parseltongue and being a Horcrux and all the stupid titles that they bestowed on me,_ Harry thought with a snort.

"Do you not _care_ , Harry?"

Harry looked up, shocked as much by the tone McGonagall had taken as the way she suddenly referred to him by his first name. She had a hand stretched out towards him, and her face was full of weariness.

"I thought you earned a rest after the war. More than that, I thought you wanted peace, your name out of the papers. Was I wrong?"

"They're still talking about me and Draco. Weeks after the event, more than they would if it was any other two boys caught having sex," Harry said, and had the somewhat immense satisfaction of seeing McGonagall flush. "I thought I could choose both being at peace and being happy. But I'm never going to be free of gossip no matter what happens. So I choose being happy."

"This could ruin your life in the ways I tried to explain to you before." McGonagall put a hand over her eyes and kept it there, as if she couldn't bear to see Harry sitting on the other side of her desk ruining his life. "You had the chance at a real amount of peace after the war, and you're giving it up for a momentary pleasure?"

"It's more than that." Harry had decided to stop explaining that to her, though. No matter what he said, he thought McGonagall was one of the people who wouldn't understand. "Are you going to give me detention for giving Draco an expensive Portkey?"

"You know I can't." McGonagall dropped her hand at last, and looked old and worn. "If I were your mother, Mr. Potter, maybe I could get through to you. I wanted to stand in a mother's place. But it seems I can't."

Harry shook his head a little. "No, you can't. And for what it's worth, Headmistress, I wouldn't have listened even to Mum if she was alive and disapproved of me dating Draco."

 _Of course, if she was alive, lots of things would be different._ But they weren't in this lifetime, so Harry didn't see the point in going around pretending they were.

"I only hope that you don't come to regret this, Mr. Potter."

"You should ask if Draco will regret _me_ ," Harry retorted, standing. "I know it's already given him some difficulty with his House."

"Anyone should be proud and happy to—be with you."

"And they should be proud and happy to have Draco, too."

Under his gaze, McGonagall looked away. "Perhaps you're right, Mr. Potter. And when I say I don't want you to regret it, please take it as a sincere good wish."

"Thank you, Headmistress."

Harry left then. He didn't think anything would change if he stayed. Professor McGonagall surely wouldn't change her mind about whether this was a good idea or not, and Harry had started to lose the desire to convince her.

He wanted to find Draco, and convince _him_.

* * *

Draco wasn't in the Great Hall, or on the Quidditch pitch, or on the stairs to Gryffindor Tower, or in the Room of Requirement. Harry at last turned towards the dungeons with a grimace. He supposed he should have known that Draco would go back to his bedroom to think things over. Harry just hadn't wanted to fight his way, or bribe his way, into the Slytherin common room, especially considering his little confrontation with Nott earlier.

But he didn't have to do either one of those things. Although he didn't have his Invisibility Cloak, there was a small group of Slytherins entering when he got close, and Harry had practically perfected his Disillusionment Charm since the war. He slipped in right behind them.

He stopped so fast that one of the girls nearly ran into him. Harry got out of the way at once, though, his eyes fastened on the scene in front of him.

There was a little mock tribunal gathered there, with Draco in the middle of it. Nott stood with his eyes narrowed and his nose in the air in front of him. The blonde girl Harry had seen with Nott on the stairs was between Nott and Draco, head turning so she looked continually, hesitantly, at both of them.

"Potter cares," said Nott, and shook his head. He was still looking mostly at the wall instead of Draco, Harry thought, easing closer. "He wanted me to tell you that."

"He told me himself, thanks." Draco touched the rose Harry had given him. It was wrapped around his wand, Harry saw.

And the sight of the rose made Harry remember what he'd told Draco about that. He paused and eased back. Draco _knew_ the rose was a Portkey. If he hadn't used it yet, he must not feel that threatened by Nott and the girl.

Or the other people Nott was trying to make into a jury, Harry thought, glancing around the Slytherin common room. The ones paying the most attention were Millicent Bulstrode and Daphne Greengrass, the only others who'd come back and were in Draco's and Harry's year. But even they had bored looks on their faces.

 _Maybe it doesn't pay to get angry at someone who has Harry bloody Potter's protection,_ Harry thought, and held back a laugh with effort.

"You shouldn't have any loyalty to someone who was on the wrong side of the war."

"The wrong side," said Draco, and shook his head. He had an expression on his face Harry had seen a lot, but not in the last few weeks. It was the way he had looked when he first came back to Hogwarts, the look Harry associated with his own eyes and the mirror, the expression he had been attracted to.

"Well?"

"You have a lot to learn, Theo, if you think I care about being on the wrong side any more except for the way it affects my chances in the future."

The blonde girl let out a little breath and whispered, "But, Draco, you can't think you can have a happy life dating Potter."

Draco snorted. "So you think locking myself away in the Slytherin dungeons would make it all better, Astoria? I'd be happier then? Worthy of more attention from you lot?" He looked at Daphne and Millicent, who both looked down a little. "Most of you already ignore me. I might as well spend my time with people who don't."

"There are still certain rules that need to be upheld," Nott began.

"Spare me from the self-righteous Slytherin act, Nott," Draco said, and yawned. Harry felt his heart leap the way it did when he heard Draco talking about his plans for the future, and it had nothing to do with the way Draco's mouth opening sometimes made his _cock_ jump. "It's a little late for that now."

"Why?"

"Because we lost the war," Draco said bluntly. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to lose at my _life_."

And he turned around and stared straight at Harry under his Disillusionment Charm, as if he had known he was there all along. Maybe he had, Harry thought as he dropped the Charm and came forwards. They did sometimes seem to have an electric connection that made them visible to each other no matter what.

" _Potter_!" bellowed Nott, his wand out. Even Millicent gasped.

Harry just shook his head and paid more attention to Draco than anyone else present, which he knew was the way Draco liked it, looping an arm around his shoulder. "Should we leave?" he asked.

Draco leaned against Harry, which supported him well, Harry thought, and hid his trembling at the same time. "We definitely should," Draco said. "Let's go."

Harry smiled at him and they walked out of the common room. Nott was still shouting behind them, about House pride and violations of the House rules and common room privacy and all the rest of it.

But he didn't shoot a curse at their backs that were technically unprotected, Harry noticed. And no one else did, either.

Nott might be more alone in hating them than Harry had thought.

* * *

"I don't remember seeing this place before." Draco was staring around at the Room of Requirement Harry had summoned as if he thought the colors of the walls were really important.

Harry gently pulled him down to the bed. "This is the place that you used to fix the Vanishing Cabinet," he murmured, and held Draco when he tried to bolt off the bed. "Well, a variant of it. You can summon all sorts of rooms when you concentrate hard enough."

"Even ones with a fireplace and a bed this big?" Draco tilted his head, and then waved his hand, as if a simple head-tilt wasn't sufficient to encompass the red and gold walls, and the fireplace that looked as if it was eating a Yule log, and the bed that could have seated six people.

"Yes. If I want to," Harry added, and moved back a little. He'd made the bed green and silver and red and gold all together, the colors swirling across the curtains and down onto the blankets and sheets and pillows. He'd thought it was a good thing until he caught Draco's skeptical gaze, and followed it to the muddy colors in the middle of the bed. All right, that color combination was a lot worse than he'd thought.

"You never showed it to me before."

"You mean more to me now than you did."

Draco turned that same sharp, assessing gaze on Harry. Harry looked back, and then reached out and put a hand on Draco's hip.

That was the point where it could all have gone badly wrong. Draco might have got up and stormed out of the room. Or he might have shaken his head and said he needed more time. Being discovered had been harder on him than on Harry. At least until today, Harry didn't think he'd had the courage to tell his Housemates to go to hell, and McGonagall didn't have as many reasons to be as kind to Draco as she did to Harry.

But something _had_ changed, and Draco repaid Harry's gamble by the speed with which he curled his fingers around Harry's. Harry gasped in spite of himself, and rolled forwards to capture Draco's lips with his.

After that, even though they were in softer surroundings than they'd ever been before, it was almost like old times. They scratched and bit each other's clothes off more than they pulled them, and then Draco threw himself on his back, yanked and twisted pillows around until they were perfectly behind his head, and spread his legs demandingly.

"You'd better not forget to conjure lube this time," he warned as Harry drew his wand.

"That was _once_."

"It was a _painful_ once."

Harry glared back at him in silence, and then conjured a lot of lube on purpose, enough to wet Draco's hips and hole and the bed. Draco yelped, but he was hiding a smile by the time Harry had worked him open and positioned his cock.

And it was different, this time, even though Harry thrust in hard as usual and Draco grunted back orders to him to move harder as usual. It was almost surreal, holding Draco on this conjured bed and fucking him with a slowness Harry had never thought they'd get to enjoy.

This was _them_. And them was apparently a pair of people who could laugh. Like Draco snorting when Harry's knee slipped on the puddle of lube and he nearly fell out of Draco. Or the way Harry opened his mouth to say something grand and romantic and ended up sneezing instead, so Draco had to reach for his wand and Transfigure a smaller pillow into a handkerchief.

 _Grand and romantic just isn't us,_ Harry thought in resignation as he wiped at his face, and put the handkerchief securely out of the way. _We're speed and slickness instead._

And he was picking up the speed as he approached his own climax, and from the way sweat gleamed on Draco's neck, he was approaching that spot right along with Harry. He breathed hoarsely through his mouth and reached up to clutch at Harry's neck. Harry bent his head indulgently and let him do it, shutting his eyes as Draco's fingers played through his hair.

"Close," Draco gasped. "Close."

"All right," Harry whispered back, understanding the unspoken request. Draco probably never would be able to put it into words. And Harry had to either accept being okay with that or break up with him.

He'd got used to it long since.

Harry sped up his own pace, rocking into Draco until he thought he would bruise his cock. But it was what Draco wanted, needed, couldn't talk about—for them to come as near the same time as possible. And from the sudden motion coiling like a spring in Harry's belly, it wouldn't take him much longer.

Draco still leaped over the edge first, with a shout and a squeeze of his inner muscles that made it very easy for Harry to follow him. Harry closed his eyes and bobbed back and forth, air whistling softly through his teeth.

"You're so _slow_."

The grating, nasal tone of Draco's voice brought Harry off. He clenched himself, and prodded once more at Draco's prostate—getting another groan—before he landed on Draco's stomach and shot deep and strong. When he could finally breathe at a normal pace again, Draco was already nudging him off so Harry could lie beside him.

Harry closed his eyes. They had lain like this before, in the rare moments before Draco stood up, and dried himself off, and ran to the Slytherin dungeons before he was missed.

There would be no more moments like that, as long as they were careful to use the Room of Requirement. McGonagall couldn't give them detentions for things she simply suspected.

Draco's heavy arm rose and hovered in the air. Harry watched it. If Draco drew his wand and cast a Cleaning Charm, nothing would have changed after all…

But Draco's arm came down and landed in a thick embrace over Harry's ribs. Harry rolled towards him and nuzzled his face into Draco's armpit, then sighed in bliss.

The last few weeks had been hard, but they had led to this moment, and he wouldn't have traded this moment for anything.

* * *

"I suppose it's not just a phase."

Harry smiled and leaned harder against Draco as they strolled through Hogsmeade. He couldn't even tell who had said that. It was just the latest disgruntled voice in a whole series of them, and maybe they were only getting away with it because of his fame, but at the moment, he didn't care.

He deserved to have a happy life, and so did Draco. If they had it because of his fame, well, it was the first nice thing his fame had ever given him. Harry would take it.

"Don't lean on me that way, you'll knock me down," Draco protested, and pushed him upright again. Harry smiled and went with the push.

"We could go to Madam Puddifoot's—"

" _No_. The only thing worse would be the Three Broomsticks."

Harry nodded. He understood why Draco didn't want to go there, given what Madam Rosmerta would probably slip into his drink in retaliation. "Well, then, the Hog's Head."

He got a few steps before he realized he was walking by himself. He turned around and raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"You're willing to be seen in that place. With me." Draco swallowed audibly.

"I'm on good terms with Aberforth," Harry protested mildly, but he knew that wasn't the point, and Draco's face, eyes, whole _body_ demanded he be serious. He hesitated, but nodded.

"Yes. I'm willing to be seen anywhere with you, Draco."

There was another one of those heavy moments when things might tip a lot of different ways, and then Draco came and leaned on _him_ in response. And no matter how much weight it might add to his steps, Harry couldn't bring himself to push him away.

"Let's go, then," Draco said. "To the Hog's Head. And maybe next week we'll even brave…Madam Puddifoot's."

Knowing how much that declaration said—much more than mere words—Harry reached out and kissed Draco on the brow.

And if other people muttered behind them as they made their way through the final streets of Hogsmeade, Harry didn't hear them. He was wholly preoccupied with something much more important.

Looking at Draco.

 **The End.**


End file.
